X-INtelligent Grid Laboratory
XING ("Crossing") seeks to create and innovate cross-disciplinary solutions for next-generation energy systems, overlapping socio-economics, meteorology, AI, and machine learning to address compound real-world needs. Modern energy systems are confronted with degraded and even stranded operational performances subject to growing complexity, uncertainty, and volatility from large-scale integration of renewable and distributed energy resources (DERs). Supported by the U.S. National Science Fundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy, our mission is to bridge the gap between next-generation energy system research and state-of-the-art data science by utilizing diversified data from weather and renewable generation data, IoT devices, smart meters, inverters, and sensors, etc.
Email: y.zhang AT okstate DOT edu Office:
217 Engineering South
Tel:
405-744-7111
ORCID:
0000-0003-4777-3433
Prof. Ying Zhang
Dr. Zhang is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, U.S. She received my Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas, TX, U.S., in 2020. Before joining OSU, she was a postdoctoral research associate in the U.S. DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) with the Interdisciplinary Science Department and a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University.
Dr. Zhang received the National Scholarship for Highest Academic Distinction in China (2011, 2013), the Frederick E. Terman Award for Graduate Students at SMU (2020), and the inaugural IEEE Power and Energy Society Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award (one of four awardees for the Ph.D. students in power and energy system domain who graduated in 2020-2022), and the U.S. DOE's American-Made Challenges Competition: Data-Driven Distributed Solar Visibility Prize (2024), and top 5 reviewers of the top-tier journal IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2025). She has authored over 30 publications in flagship journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, etc. Her publications have received distinctions such as Best Paper Awards at the IEEE PES General Meeting and IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference, and Global ESI Top 1% Highly Cited Paper.
Dr. Zhang serves as Vice Chair of the Awards Subcommittee, IEEE Power and Energy Society Power System Operation, Planning and Economics Committee, Secretary of the IEEE Task Force on Performance Evaluation of Distribution System State Estimation, Associate Editor for the Journal IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, and Associate Editor for IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution, and a reviewer for about ten IEEE/IET journals. She is an IEEE Senior Member.
Research Interests
Energy and Power Systems, Renewable Integration, AI/ML for Engineering Systems, Smart Grid and Active Distribution Networks, Grid Resilience Against Climate Disasters, Cyber-Physical System
Achievements in numbers
As of Jan 2025, total funds: $6.3 M; citations: 1200+; journal papers: 18; conference papers: 12; current lab members: 7; PhDs/Masters graduated: 1; awards/honors received by mentees: 5
2025 News
03/2025: Dr. Zhang is appointed as Associate Editor of the journal IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (IF: 8.6) .
03/2025: Dr. Zhang is elevated to IEEE Senior Member, a distinct network reserved for only 16% of IEEE Power & Energy Society members and 13% of IEEE members.
03/2025: Dr. Zhang is recognized as one of the top 5 reviewers of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (TSG) for 2024 from the thousands of expert reviewers.
03/2025: Dr. Zhang gave an invited talk for the Graduate Seminar at the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.
02/2025: Undergraduate student Joel Nnaji joined the lab as a Research Assistant. Welcome!
02/2025: Three papers about inverter-based resources, wildfire risk assessment, and digital twinning of distribution grids have been accepted by the 2025 IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) General Meeting. Congrats to Zaid, Yuanshuo, and Yihao! They are
1) Yuanshuo's paper, Weather-Dependent Power Flow in Distribution Systems under Extreme Weather: Case Study and Risk Assessment in Wildfire Scenarios,
2) Zaid's paper, A Virtual Admittance-Based Fault Current Limiting Method for Grid-Forming Inverters,
3) Yihao's paper, On the Potential of Digital Twins for Distribution System State Estimation with Randomly Missing Data in Heterogeneous Measurements.
01/2025: Dr. Zhang is appointed Associate Editor of the Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy (IF: 5.7).
01/2025: Yuanshuo's paper, Weather-Dependent Fast Power Flow in Distribution Systems: A Meteorological-Data-Aided Method, has been accepted by the 2025 IEEE Texas Power and Energy Conference (TPEC). Congrats! [Read here]
01/2025: Jiahao Chen (22' Kent State U) joined the lab as a Ph.D. student. Welcome!
2024 News
11/2024: [Breaking News] Dr. Zhang has led a team of EE and CS researchers to win the runner-up of the American-Made Challenges Competition: Data-Driven Distributed (3D) Solar Visibility Prize among 35 teams from U.S. industry and academia, receiving a $25,000 cash prize! This competition was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office. This prize highlights the nationwide recognized expertise of the OSU power group in AI-driven smart grid technologies. Kudos to our team Pokes and Mustangs, Yihao Wang @SMU CS, Yuanshuo Zhang @OSU ECE, and Dr. Eric Larson @SMU CS! [See News Release]
11/2024: Zaid Ibn Mahmood completed his master's thesis defense, Congrats!
10/2024: Dr. Zhang gave an invited talk at the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, titled "Physics-Informed Machine Learning to Enhance Distribution Grid Situational Awareness".
10/2024: Our paper, Knowledge-Inspired Data-Aided Robust Power Flow in Distribution Networks with ZIP Loads and High DER Penetration, is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Applications (IF: 4.2). Congrats to Sungjoo and Yuanshuo! [Read here]
09/2024: Undergraduate student Luke Dwayne Cardiel joined the lab as a Research Assistant. Welcome! Luke has been selected as an ECE Miller Research Scholar for the 2024-2025 academic year, based on his excellent research proposal under Dr. Zhang's advising. Congrats, Luke!
07/2024: [Breaking News] We have been awarded a $6 million grant for our NSF project, "RII FEC: Accelerating Community-Centric Energy Transformation through AI-driven Digital Twinning for Climate-Aware Resilience." Dr. Zhang will co-lead as OSU PI and work with NMSU, the University of Alabama Huntsville, and MSU to address the critical challenges of climate change and aging energy infrastructure, with a focus on underserved communities. Kudos to the team! [See News Release]
07/2024: Dr. Zhang is recognized as the secretary of the IEEE Task Force on Performance Evaluation for Distribution System State Estimation.
07/2024: [Breaking News] Ph.D. student Sungjoo Chung won First Prize in the Graduate Student Poster Contest at the IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, for our poster titled "Taylor-Expansion-Based Robust Power Flow in Unbalanced Distribution Systems: A Hybrid Data-Aided Method." Congrats to Sungjoo!
05/2024: [Breaking News] Our Paper, with Ph.D. student Sungjoo Chung as the first author, Taylor-Expansion-Based Robust Power Flow in Unbalanced Distribution Systems: A Hybrid Data-Aided Method, won the Best Paper award at the 2024 IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) General Meeting. Congrats to the team! [See News Release]
04/2024: Three ECE students, Taha Saeed Khan (Advisor: Dr. Nazaripouya) , Ahmad Ali (Advisor: Dr. Cui ), and Sungjoo Chung (Advisor: Dr. Y. Zhang), won the “Best in Group” Award in the OSU 2nd CEAT Graduate Student Research Symposium. Congrats to Taha, Ahmad, and Sungjoo.
04/2024: Sungjoo received the 2024 Dr. Ramakumar Family Energy Scholarship sponsored by the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at OSU as one of the two runners-up. Congrats, Sungjoo!
03/2024: Our paper, Addressing Wind Power Forecast Errors in Day-Ahead Pricing With Energy Storage Systems: A Distributionally Robust Joint Chance-Constrained Approach, is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy (IF: 8.8). [Read here]
02/2024: Our paper, Cooperative Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Decentralized Emergency Voltage Control, is selected as the Best Paper Contest Finalist (Top 5) by the 2024 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference!
02/2024: Our paper, Taylor-Expansion-Based Robust Power Flow in Unbalanced Distribution Systems: A Hybrid Data-Aided Method, is accepted by the IEEE PES General Meeting, a flagship conference in the domain of power and energy systems. Congrats to Sungjoo! [Read here]
01/2024: Yuanshuo Zhang (23' CUHK) joined the lab as a Ph.D. student. Welcome!
2023 News
12/2023: Our paper, Multi-Agent Graph-Attention Deep Reinforcement Learning for Post-Contingency Grid Emergency Voltage Control, is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (IF: 10.4).
11/2023: Dr. Zhang is appointed Associate Editor of the journal IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution.
10/2023: Dr. Zhang is appointed Vice Chair of the Awards Subcommittee, IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) Power System Operation, Planning and Economics Committee (2024-2028).
10/2023: Two papers, Deep Reinforcement Learning-Enabled Adaptive Forecasting-Aided State Estimation in Distribution Systems with Multi-Source Multi-Rate Data & Cooperative Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Decentralized Emergency Voltage Control, are accepted by the 2024 IEEE IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference.
07/2023: [Breaking News]Invited talk in the Outstanding Dissertation Award Panel of the 2023 IEEE PES General Meeting, "Distribution System Situational Awareness: From Model-Based to Data-Driven and Beyond", please see the slides here . Dr. Zhang's dissertation was officially awarded as the 2023 IEEE Power and Energy Society Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation to recognize the research achievement of Ph.D. students who graduated in 2020-2022 in the power and energy domain.
06/2023: Our paper, "Artificial Intelligence Applications in Electric Distribution Systems: Post-Pandemic Progress and Prospect", is accepted by Applied Sciences. Congrats Sungjoo!
05/2023: Dr. Zhang started a one-month summer visit at Cornell University, a lot of brainstorming and discussion with Dr. Hsiao-Dong Chiang! Thanks for Dr. Chiang's hospitality.
03/2023: Invited Talk in Women in Data Science 2023 @ University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. Happy International Women's Day!
01/2023: Sungjoo Chung (22' UIUC) joined the lab as a Ph.D. student. Welcome!
01/2023: Our paper, Off-policy deep reinforcement learning with automatic entropy adjustment for adaptive grid emergency control, is accepted by Electric Power Systems Research!
